a massive haul of material worthy of a month off (being a visit to the public library)

Nothing unusual. Just the weekly visit. Favoured branches have changed based on commute times and destinations. But what hasn't changed is the potential that one day (like today), I'd look like I was walking out of a grocery store of books and movies. Here's what I have now: on the movies front, we have Bowfinger (some preliminary thoughts noted elsewhere) and a David Mamet nugget called Spartan. As for the books, we have for ourselves what you would refer to as an overdose:

* Being a Chuck Palahniuk fan, I've begun to trace his influences. A key influence has been another minimalist writer Tom Spanbauer. So I've already begun his début novel Faraway Places and now I also have his most famous work The Man who fell in love with the Moon.

* Another influence that Palahniuk cites a lot (an influence that was also a prominent feature in Spanbauer's writing workshop that Palahniuk attended) is Amy Hempel. The directly referenced story The Harvest is available online, but also part of At the gates of the animal kingdom, which I snagged today. I also picked up Reasons to Live.

* I picked up Salman Rushdie's Fury on a whim. It was either this or the fatter The Ground beneath her Feet. Besides this one seemed like an angrier book ;)

* Make-believe town: essays and remembrances marks another edition in my David Mamet reading

* And then there's Neil Gaiman's American gods : a novel (after a wonderful introduction to Sandman from Sudarshan, I couldn't resist gobbling this up)

* And from a trivia-mongering perspective, there's Fountain Society, the only novel (AFAIR) that horror-meister Wes Craven ever wrote ...

* Continuing my Harlan Ellison trip, I picked up Deathbird stories

* And for no particular reason (perhaps to read "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman again?) I picked up Masterpieces: the best science fiction of the century edited by Orson Scott card.